How I Develop a Visual Identity Concept

Concept development is the phase of identity work that happens between the brief and the first design exploration — the period where ideas are being formed before anything is drawn. How you spend this time determines what you're capable of in the design phase.

Start With the Brand, Not With Design

My first move after receiving a brief is not to open Illustrator and start sketching logo concepts. It's to sit with the brief, ask follow-up questions if needed, and really understand what the brand is trying to communicate and to whom.

I make notes in plain language: what is this brand's personality? What position does it occupy? What does it need to communicate that it currently doesn't? What are the key tensions or challenges in the brand communication? What would success look like?

This thinking doesn't produce designs — it produces direction. Direction is what determines whether the designs I make next are going in the right place.

Research and Reference

After building my understanding of the brief, I do competitive research — looking at the visual landscape of the category to understand conventions and opportunities — and reference research — collecting visual work from any category that has qualities relevant to this brand.

The competitive research is about context. I want to understand what the brand needs to stand out from, or what conventions exist that should be respected or broken. This shapes positioning decisions in the identity.

The reference research is more open-ended. I'm looking for work — from any discipline, any era — that has qualities I want to explore: a specific use of space, a typographic register, a color approach, a formal logic. I'm not collecting templates to copy. I'm calibrating my visual thinking.

Writing the Concept Before Drawing It

Before I draw anything, I write the concept. One or two paragraphs describing: what the identity is about, what it's communicating, what formal decisions this implies. This sounds like design theory, but it's actually practical — it gives me a testable hypothesis to design toward.

A written concept also provides a frame for presenting and defending the work. When a client challenges a decision, I can respond not just by showing the design but by explaining the logic it was built from.

Multiple Directions, Not Multiple Executions

I explore a small number of genuinely different conceptual directions rather than many executions of the same concept. Two or three distinct conceptual territories — different ideas about what the brand could be — explored enough to be understood and evaluated.

When I show too many concepts, clients feel they're choosing between designs. When I show a small number of well-developed directions, they feel they're choosing between ideas. The latter produces much better conversations.

The Concept Is Not the Design

A concept is an idea. The design is the execution of that idea. A good concept can be executed many different ways. If a concept can only be executed one way, it's probably not a concept — it's a specific design solution.

I try to hold the concept level and the execution level separately in my own thinking during development. The concept needs to be right before the execution gets refined. Refining the execution of a weak concept produces polished work that misses the mark.